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Books > Social sciences > Warfare & defence > Weapons & equipment > General
Steve Joubert had always wanted to be a pilot and the only way he could afford to do so, was to join the South African Air Force in the late 1970s.
As an adventurous young man with a wicked sense of humour, he tells of the many amusing escapades he had as a trainee pilot. But soon he is sent to fight in the Border War in northern Namibia (then South West Africa) where he is exposed to the carnage of war. The pilots of the Alouette helicopters were witness to some of the worst scenes of the Border War. Often, they were the first to arrive after a deadly landmine accident.
In the fiercest battles their gunships regularly supplied life-saving air cover to troops on the ground.
In a makeshift laboratory built on a golf course in Maryland,
chemist Stanley Lovell led a secret team of scientists that
developed the secret gadgets and weapons of the Second World War.
Their 'Dirty Tricks Department' was the real-life equivalent of
James Bond's legendary Q Branch. If a spy or saboteur needed a
forged passport for cover, a silent pistol for executions, an
incendiary device for starting fires, or a cyanide pill to kill
themselves with before being captured alive, the scientists created
it. Moreover, they developed poisons to assassinate foreign
leaders, chemical and biological weapons to deploy against enemy
soldiers, and truth drugs to interrogate prisoners of war. The
Dirty Tricks Department is the first book to focus on the daring,
exciting, and often tragic exploits of the men and women who made
and used these devices. Lovell and his team exerted a
disproportionally large influence on history. Not only were they
integral to the Allied victory, but they left a dark legacy that
has, until now, gone mainly unacknowledged.
Bousquet's landmark book examines the impact of key technologies
and scientific ideas on the theory and practice of warfare and the
handling of the perennial tension between order and chaos on the
battlefield. Spanning the entire modern era, from the Scientific
Revolution to the present, it offers a systematic account of modern
warfare as the constitution of increasingly complex assemblages of
bodies and machines whose integration rests upon a military
assimilation of scientific thought. Reflecting the pervasive
influence of scientific conceptual frameworks upon warfare, modern
armies have been successively organised by reference to the
paradigmatic technologies of the clock, engine, computer, and
network. Conversely, major scientific developments and
technological breakthroughs have become intertwined with the
experience of war, especially since the Second World War's
unprecedented mobilisation of scientific rationality and technical
expertise. This increasingly tight symbiosis between science,
technology, and war is at the heart of both the tremendous powers
and enduring pathologies displayed by the contemporary military
machine. In this new and revised edition, Bousquet extends the
analysis to encompass the latest developments in the scientific way
of warfare in the midst of renewed great power competition and a
wave of technological innovation in artificial intelligence and
robotics.
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Weapons
(Paperback)
Chris McNab
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R851
R758
Discovery Miles 7 580
Save R93 (11%)
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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From the American Civil War and the introduction of the metal
cartridge in the 1860s up to the present day, The Encyclopedia of
Weapons is an accessible reference guide to the most important
small arms, armoured vehicles, aircraft and ships from all around
the world. The book ranges from the first Gatling guns to
favourites such as the Lee Enfield rifle and the AK-47; in terms of
aircraft the book includes World War I biplanes, World War II’s
Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress and Mitsubishi A6M2 Zero fighter and on
to modern stealth aircraft; in naval weaponry the book features
early ironclad submarines, classic ships such as Bismarck and the
nuclear subs of today; from the first tanks on the Western Front in
World War I, such as the Mark V Male, the book covers the
development of armoured fighting vehicles, featuring such classics
as the Soviet T-34 and modern tanks like the M1 Abrams. With an
entry per page, each weapon is illustrated with two colour artworks
– some of them cutaways – a colour or black-&-white
photograph, an authoritative history on its development, production
and service history and a box of essential specifications.
Featuring more than 400 entries, The Encyclopedia of Weapons is a
fascinating reference work on the most important tanks, guns,
military ships and aircraft over the past 150 years.
This book addresses issues of legal and moral governance arising in
the development, deployment, and eventual uses of emerging
technologies in military operations. Proverbial wisdom has it that
law and morality always lag behind technological innovation. Hence,
the book aims to identify, enumerate, and constructively address
the problems of adequate governance for the development,
deployment, and eventual uses of military technologies that have
been newly introduced into military operations or which will be
available in the near future. Proposals for modifications in
governance, the book argues, closely track the anxieties of many
critics of these technologies to the extent that they will
proliferate, prove destructive in unanticipated ways, and partially
or wholly escape regulation under current treaties and regulatory
regimes. In addition to such concerns in domestic and especially in
international law, the book addresses ethical norms in the
professions involved in the design and eventual use of specific
technologies, principally involving the professional norms of
practice in engineering and the military (as well as biomedical and
health care practice), which impose moral obligations on their
members to avoid reckless endangerment or criminal negligence in
the course of their activities. Thus, in addition to exploring the
application of existing legal regimes and moral norms, the book
examines how these professions might develop or improve the
voluntary constraints on forms of malfeasance that are enshrined in
their histories and codes of best practices. This book should prove
of great interest to students of ethics, military studies,
philosophy of war and peace, law, and international relations.
Featuring 155 color photographs and illustrations, "Native
American Weapons" surveys weapons made and used by American Indians
north of present-day Mexico from prehistoric times to the late
nineteenth century, when European weapons were in common use. Over
thousands of years the weapons were developed and creatively
matched to their environment--highly functional and often
decorative, carried proudly in tribal gatherings and in war.
""
With a brand new introduction from the author, this is the complete
story of how the bomb was developed. It is told in rich, human,
political, and scientific detail, from the turn-of-the-century
discovery of the vast energy locked inside the atom to the dropping
of the first bombs on Japan. Few great discoveries have evolved so
swiftly -- or have been so misunderstood. From the theoretical
discussions of nuclear energy to the bright glare of Trinity there
was a span of hardly more than twenty-five years. What began as
merely an interesting speculative problem in physics grew into the
Manhattan Project, and then into the Bomb with frightening
rapidity, while scientists known only to their peers -- Szilard,
Teller, Oppenheimer, Bohr, Meitner, Fermi, Lawrence, and yon
Neumann -- stepped from their ivory towers into the limelight.
Richard Rhodes takes us on that journey step by step, minute by
minute, and gives us the definitive story of man's most awesome
discovery and invention. The Making of the Atomic Bomb has been
compared in its sweep and importance to William L. Shirer's The
Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. It is at once a narrative tour de
forceand a document as powerful as its subject.
This encyclopedia traces the fascinating history of knives,
daggers, bayonets, swords, sabres and lances, from their
Palaeolithic origins through to the 21st century. Weapons from
around the world are examined, such as the decorated daggers of
Persia and the exquisite knives of Japan. A superb directory
features 750 examples of sharp-edged weapons, describing the
origins, capabilities and specifications of each one. With 1500
photographs and illustrations, and written by leading experts in
the field, this beautiful guide is an indispensable resource for
the serious collector and amateur enthusiast alike, and will
fascinate anyone with an interest in historical weapons.
The history of warfare cannot be fully understood without
considering the technology of killing. In Firepower, acclaimed
historian Paul Lockhart tells the story of military technology from
the Renaissance to the dawn of the atomic era --
five-hundred-year-long "age of firepower" during which the
evolution of weaponry transformed the conduct of warfare in the
West. Weapons technology had always influenced warfare. But the
introduction of gunpowder weapons at the close of the Middle Ages
made military technology the largest single factor shaping
warfare's tactics, strategy, and logistics. Over the five centuries
leading up to World War II, the art of war revolved around the
ever-more-effective delivery of firepower, and the driving force of
weapons development was the compulsion to make that possible. But
for centuries, even as it became more effective, military weaponry
remained simple and affordable enough that nearly any state could
afford to equip a respectable army; weapons could be used and used
again until they physically wore out. That all changed, very
suddenly, around 1870. Widespread industrialization and rapid
advances in metallurgy and chemistry meant that by the start of
World War I, only a handful of great powers could afford to
manufacture their own weapons. Revolutions in military technology,
in short, triggered a revolution in the structure of power in the
West, significantly reducing the number of nations that could act
assertively in international politics -- and reducing the others to
a condition of permanent subordination. Going beyond the
battlefield to consider the profound political and social contexts
of armed conflict, Firepower ultimately reveals how the evolution
of weapons technology, and the uses to which it has been put, have
together transformed human history.
This book provides a concise introduction to the increasingly
important field of forensic mental health. It aims to set out both
the key concepts in forensic mental health as well as the way the
discipline operates in the broader context of criminal justice and
mental health care systems. It will provide an ideal introduction
to the subject for students taking courses in universities and
elsewhere, for mental health practitioners in the early stages of
their careers, and for professionals from other agencies needing an
informed and up-to-date account of forensic mental health.
From the Big Bang to Hiroshima, the incredible story of the most
disastrous weapon ever inventedOn August 6, 1945, at 8:15 in the
morning, an explosive charge of more than 15 kilotons fell on the
city of Hiroshima. Tens of thousands of people were pulverized, and
everything within four square miles was instantly destroyed. A
deluge of flames and ash had just caused Japan’s greatest trauma
and changed the course of modern warfare and life on Earth forever.
The world was horrified by the existence of the bomb—the first
weapon of mass destruction. But how could such an appalling tool be
invented? To answer this question, Alcante, Laurent-Frédéric
Bollée, and Denis Rodier return to the origins of its main
component, uranium, and shed light on the scientific discoveries
around this element and its uses both civilian and military.
Sifting through the history, from Katanga to Japan, through
Germany, Norway, the USSR, and New Mexico,The Bomb is a succession
of incredible but true stories. Alcante, Bollée, and Rodier have
created an exhaustive and definitive work of nonfiction that
details the stories of the unsung players as well as the remarkable
men and women who are at the crux of its history and the events
that followed.
This book provides a concise introduction to the increasingly
important field of forensic mental health. It aims to set out both
the key concepts in forensic mental health as well as the way the
discipline operates in the broader context of criminal justice and
mental health care systems. It will provide an ideal introduction
to the subject for students taking courses in universities and
elsewhere, for mental health practitioners in the early stages of
their careers, and for professionals from other agencies needing an
informed and up-to-date account of forensic mental health.
Since 1961 the Adelphi Papers have provided some of the most
informed accounts of international and strategic relations.
Produced by the world renowned International Institute of Strategic
Studies, each paper provides a short account of a subject of
topical interest by a leading military figure, policymaker or
academic.
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